(ORGANIZED 1880.)

OBJECTS.-The SOCIETY was organized by citizens who believe that the suc cess of our government depends on the active political influence of educated intelligence, and that parties are means, not ends. It is entirely non-partisan in its organization and is not to be used for any other purpose than the awakening of an intelligent interest in government methods and purposes, tending to restrain the abuse of parties and to promote party morality.

Among its organizers are numbered Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, who differ among themselves as to which party is best fitted to conduct the government; but who are in the main agreed as to the following propositions:

The right of each citizen to his free voice and vote must be upheld.

Office-holders must not control the suffrage. The office should seek the man, and not the man the office

Public service, in business positions, should depend solely on fitness and good behavior.

The crimes of bribery and corruption must be relentlessly punished.

Local issues should be independent of national parties.

Coins made unlimited legal tender must possess their face value as metal in the markets of the world.

Sound currency must have a metal basis, and

Persons who become members of the Society are not, however, required to endorse the above.

METHODS.-The Society proposes to carry out its objects by submitting from time to time to its members lists of books which it regards as desirable reading on current political and economic questions; by selecting annual courses of reading for its members; by supplying the books so selected at the smallest possible advance beyond actual cost; by furnishing and circulating at a low price, and in cheap form, sound economic and political literature in maintenance and illustration of the principles above announced as constituting the basis of its organization; and by assisting in the formation of reading and corresponding circles and clubs for discussing social, political, and economic questions.

ORGANIZATION.-The Society is managed by a Committee, selected from year to year. The correspondence of the Society is divided among five Secretaries, one each for the East, the Northwest, the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Pacific Slope.

It is suggested that branch organizations be formed wherever it is possible (and especially in colleges) to carry out the intentions of the Society. Any person who will form a Club of ten persons, each of whom shall be an active member of this Society, will be entitled to a set of the tracts issued for the current year.

"Without counsel purposes are disappointed; but in the multitude of counsellors they are established."

The object of this pamphlet is to lay before employers and wage-earners a simple, inexpensive, and perfectly practicable method of adjusting, to their mutual satisfaction and advantage, the countless minor differences arising from the conflict of interest. These differences, while inevitable, are in the main productive of good, by creating a wholesome friction and tending to place a reasonable restraint upon the development of selfishness.

Seeking only to promote peace and good-will in the industries whose activities are the pulse-beats of the nation, the writer hopes his little book will be read with kindly spirit by all into whose hands it may come.

THE SHOP COUNCIL.

The principle of general arbitration, as applicable to the settlement of labor disputes, has been widely and intelligently discussed and the advantages claimed for it are well understood. It has been presented for the consideration of employers and wage-earners in many aspects, but has not met with very cordial acceptance. Its satisfactory application in adjusting the differences constantly arising in the industries is attended with many and serious practical difficulties. The greatest of these result from the fact that neither party to a labor dispute is often willing to surrender the right to decide the issue and enforce its own decision.

Employers claim to have a clear and intelligent understanding of the conditions affecting their own interests, and, as the rule, decline to delegate to any board or committee, however constituted, the right to decide questions which for them may be of vital importance. It must be admitted that this reluctance to encourage or tolerate outside interference in matters involving grave and far-reaching consequences, is perfectly natural and proper. The employer of labor is usually the trustee of interests which it is his duty to protect according to his own best judgment. He has no right to bind himself to pursue a course to be prescribed by a board of arbitration, not knowing what its decision will be. He is unwilling to surrender any part of the right to manage his own business in his own way, which he claims by virtue of his sole assumption of its risks and obligations. He knows that a board of arbitration cannot intelligently

decide any question affecting his interests or those of his workmen without a knowledge of facts which he cannot impart without laying before them his books, and giving to those who have no right to it information which might be used to his disadvantage. He is unwilling to declare his profits or confess his losses, to proclaim his manufacturing costs or publish the secrets of his business; and without such an exposition of his affairs, a board of arbitration cannot intelligently decide any issue of consequence to him or the men employed by him.

Labor has its organizations formed to promote and protect its interests, and regards with suspicion, and perhaps with jealousy, any tribunal which is not of its own creation. Its conferences are held with closed doors, and it does not freely discuss the questions which concern it in the presence of those who represent the interests of "capital." It distrusts arbitration at the hands of a board so constituted as to be acceptable to employers, fearing that its representatives in such a board would be overmatched by men of broader education and larger experience, whose sympathies would naturally incline toward the employers. Exaggerating the power of organization, they look to the trade union to dictate in matters affecting the welfare of labor, and it rarely happens that workmen having an organization of their own are willing to submit to arbitration any question at issue between themselves and their employers, especially under circumstances involving an agreement to abide by the decision reached.*

* Since the foregoing was written a very discouraging confession that arbitration is not a panacea for all ills that befall the relations between employers and men, comes from England in the form of a letter which Edward Trow has addressed to the men in the manufactured iron trade of the North of England. This Board of Arbitration and Conciliation was established in 1869, and as Mr. Trow, who has been the secretary of the operatives for many years, says in his letter, over 800 cases affecting general wages or other questions were settled by it, all of them with the exception of a few being loyally accepted both by employers and